I think the hardest thing to teach a student is that what he or she puts down on paper is changeable.
I have a lot of work to do today;
I need to slaughter memory,
Turn my living soul to stone
Then teach myself to live again.
There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.
We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage.
We should teach our children nothing which they shall ever need to unlearn
The teacher has to inspire, to agitate. You cannot teach acting. You can only stimulate what's already there.
I did not teach painting but seeing. I concentrated on the basic courses for beginners. I taught drawing (purposely without nudes), color (without any painting as such) and design (as 'structural organization'). And so the graduate students came 'down' to the basic courses for beginners.
In 1923, when I had been a student at the 'Bauhaus' in Weimar…. Gropius [the director of Bauhaus] asked me to teach the basic course 'Werklehhre'. He wanted me to introduce newcomers to the principles of handicrafts. He knew that I came from that background and had appropriate practice and knowledge.
I have taught – until 10 years ago – for nearly 40 years, that is almost half of my life. And when I think that over – now afterwards -, I come to a surprising conclusion, namely that I did not teach arts as such, but philosophy and psychology of art.
As parents in private life teach wisdom to their children, so do [poets] in public life to their cities.
